


beautiful.

by nonbinarybabadook



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: and all of my se writing is some of my best writing, because it's just sitting around, first week is when they fight blair and second week is after the moon fight, i might post more of my old writing, i wrote this in February last year and i still like it so i thought i'd post it here, maka isn't really? self conscious? but all of the negative comments about her body get to her, short and sweet, soul and maka are queer platonic partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 09:58:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20794781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarybabadook/pseuds/nonbinarybabadook
Summary: When she's twelve, Maka takes a long look at herself in the mirror after a long week.When she's fifteen, Maka takes a long look at herself in the mirror after a long week.





	beautiful.

she’s twelve, standing in front of a mirror. chewing on the inside of her cheek while the bath runs, the normally cool bathroom filling with warmth as the scalding water gathers. 

it’s been a long week. 

it wouldn’t have been quite so long if she hadn’t received so many verbal attacks over the seven days. they’ve known blair two weeks now, ( who keeps breaking into their apartment and saying she should be able to stay with them since they “destroyed her house”. _it was a pumpkin,_ maka said one time in a voice void of any emotion or amusement, _and you have magic. go carve another one._ she only got an upturned nose and a self-righteous _hm!_ ) and seeing someone who looks so vastly different from her, with her body on display almost constantly wouldn’t bother her so much if people didn’t keep _comparing her_ to blair. flat chest. no hips. too skinny. no sway when she walks. no smiles that aren’t earned and no sultry looks. fat ankles. weird knees. nothing that maka has never found issue with until people wouldn’t shut up about it. soul’s the worst. it’s like he wants to make a point of listing what he thinks is a physical flaw. 

standing before the mirror, maka sees her body as if she’s outside of it. she’s mostly muscle from the amount of intense training and sports she’s been doing for as long as she can remember. thin, but not too thin, in her opinion. she looks… like a person, she thinks. she isn’t drop dead gorgeous, she isn’t beautiful like her mother, or handsome like her father. she doesn’t shave her armpits ( a fact blair found horrifying when she saw maka in a t-shirt ) because she wears long sleeves constantly, and only really shaves her legs because her mother had always talked about how she loves the process, how she always felt light and graceful. mama had held her in her arms, slathering the shaving cream on her legs for her and guiding her through the steps, making sure she never cut herself with the razor. she’d been delighted that she could share this with her mama, glowing from the attention. she was gone a year later. 

of course, wearing a skirt also made shaving a necessity unless she wanted more constant ridicule. but she didn’t mind it. 

it was the only thing maka went out of her way for, in terms of her appearance. tsubaki was beautiful in a way no other girl she’d met could compare to, liz and patty had their perfect white skin and smooth hair, and all three had everything everyone insisted maka needed to be beautiful, too. _maybe it’s as it should be,_ she thinks, _to be the outsider, like i’ve always been. now i’m just ugly, instead of freaky. _

but she didn’t _feel_ ugly. she just felt… confused. she thought she looked _fine._ sure, she has discoloring on certain parts of her skin, mostly on her stomach and chest, the uneven splattering of freckles that cover her shoulders and biceps, and she’s got her collection of scars, but no one sees those. it’s always her silhouette, the way she does her hair and the lack of makeup she wears that’s always the issue. but her body shows what she’s lived through. her body’s a testament to how hard she’s worked her entire life, strong and more dependable than anyone she knows. she trusts her limbs. she trusts her lungs, and her heart, and the rest of her organs. she trusts her legs to run fast, and faster when fast isn’t enough. she trusts her arms to be able to cut through skin and bone with a weapon that most people wouldn’t be able to control, let alone win battles with. she’s built like a gymnast, not a succubus. 

but it was apparently only she saw this. 

shaking her head hard and rubbing her hands down her face, maka turns from the mirror. all she can do, she supposes, is to her best to ignore the comments. after all, she sweats far too much and touches her face too often to start wearing makeup. and there’s nothing to be done about the rest of her. she can’t go out and order a pair of boobs and hips that people will tell her is pretty. 

she’s never been pretty. now, she’ll just have to get used to hearing it all the time. 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

she’s fifteen, standing in front of the mirror. 

it’d been a long week. 

she was released from the hospital a week prior. soul was named the last death scythe, kid the new lord death, and black*star jumping off the roof once again to make a big entrance when it was all over. she helped trap the kishin, lost one of her best friends to their madness and that fucking witch, and went through hell in the meantime. 

burn-scarred fingers gently touch the large, circular scar in the center of her chest. the black blood did a remarkable job of healing her after getting skewered by asura, but it couldn’t stitch her back together without the tissue being… off. her lungs and heart worked differently after being healed. she ran halfway around the city and only had to stop when her legs started trembling. her breathing wasn’t too labored, and her pulse wasn’t pounding in her ears, though. she’s wondered, several times since she first woke up after flying back from the moon, just what else has changed. 

dropping her hand, her gaze goes to the other scars. she’s not sure anymore if she has more scars than normal skin. with a snort of laughter, maka thinks she looks like a battlefield. she feels like one. 

her hands rise again, inspecting her skin in a way she rarely does. she only ever looks in a mirror to do her hair, not to dwell on her appearance. not to look at what the past three years have done to her. soul likely knows what her scars feel like under fingers than she does. he's certainly bandaged more of them. her arms are a mess, littered with various sizes of them, some deeper than others, some more gruesome than others. a jagged one where her arm broke and bone burst out of the skin still aches, sometimes. 

kim’s healing magic came far too late to really do anything about maka’s marred skin. the healer doesn’t even know what lies under her shirt and jacket. 

her legs aren’t as bad. most baddies don’t aim for the legs, always going for kill shots or disarming shots, which is convenient for continuing to wear skirts and not have constant comments. 

her shoulders, the skin around the base of her neck and chest is… bad. she knows this. she still vividly remembers the first time soul spied some peeking out of her collar, and yanked her shirt aside to expose her shoulder before she could protest. his face had gone slack with surprise. she was so quiet about her pain. she had simply soldiered through it her entire life, only crying out when she got injured and couldn’t help it, and barely ever commenting on it when she was healing. it was likely around then that her partner realized and remember just how many hits she’s taken. he was so surprised by the scarring that he didn’t even have the chance to blame himself for not defending her well enough ( she gets on him about that whenever she notices him slipping into that doubt and self-hatred. upsets her to no end ). in the end, all he’d been able to get out when maka yanked her shirt back and pulled it higher up her neck was _how did i not know you had so many freckles?_ black*star only recently started sporting the scar through his star tattoo, and maka almost envies how comfortable he feels without sleeves. 

her hands end up at her cheeks, pressing her palms hard into them, and effectively squishing all of the skin on her face together with enough pressure that her eyes are forced to close. 

with a heavy sigh that makes her shoulder drop, maka opens her eyes to see herself again. papa said she was starting to look like mama, but maka can’t see it. her mother was ethereal, as beautiful as the stars. glowing and shining, but far away. maka felt like she was something else. some other type of creature. 

shrugging at herself in the mirror, maka gathers her hair up onto the top of her head, tying it up. she’s filthy, with various scrapes and bruises from their last assignment. she’s not going to get her hair even more dirty before she has the chance to try to clean it. 

maybe one day she’ll form an opinion on her appearance that isn’t _this is what i look like._


End file.
